The Hitwise Student 100
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Yesterday (June 2nd) Hitwise released some data about the top 100 student websites in the UK – which makes for quite interesting reading. Now I’m as familiar with the phrase “lies, damned lies, and statistics” as the next man but Hitwise have been very open about their methodology and I reckon these numbers are as trustworthy as any and make for a fun glimpse into what students are looking at.
There are few shocks at the top of the charts, all the perennial favourites are well represented; Google, Facebook, the BBC, Wikipedia and Microsoft all appear near the top. Yahoo and Myspace just about hang on in there in the Top 20 and eBay seems high at 14 (I thought my mum was the last user!)
Bebo is down at 34 which kind of blows away some of my preconceptions about Bebo users – are they not even at uni yet? Or do the swap to Facebook at the point?
Sky Sports is a very respectable 18, the first non-Beeb mainstream media showing. Personally I would choose BBC Sport over the Sky Sports site every day but I know from experience with sports (read football) mad friends that Sky is their first port of call.
Pleased to see Google Maps as the top mapping application with students; Streetmap and Mapquest seem to continue to reign in more general lists and the sooner they die off the better in my opinion.
Twitter has a surprisingly high entry at 22 – I have recently started to see a younger demographic entering Twitter but this suggests its staring to really gain momentum; maybe it was a Stephen Fry induced blip though.
There were seven sites in the list that I had never come across before;
- Surf the Channel – appears to be a listing site for various sites that stream TV and movies
- MegaVideo – looks like YouTube with less videos but also less worries about copyright!
- ASOS – some kind of online clothes retailer
- SideReel – a TV show based community, a little like Television Without Pity but with less snark
- SuperNova Tube – same as MegaVideo I think
- Tudou – I’m guessing its a Japanese video site
- Nasza Klasa – which I guess is some kind of Polish social network?
All the banks are well represented as are many newspaper websites, with the Guardian at the top. Whether this is good news for the ‘papers or not is a different question as judging by my times on uni campuses very few newspapers are sold to anyone but the staff so the students are getting used to news for free online.
The only real blog in the top 100 is Perez Hilton but I guess at this point that is more of an entertainment brand and it has long moved past its blogger roots. Blogger.com is on the list but no sign of Wordpress or Typepad.
As for anything study focused on the list? Well obviously Wikipedia and Google itself then Google Booksearch is at 40 and Google Scholar is at 63 along with a couple of dictionary style sites. That is about it.
A fun list and perhaps something that could have fed into the ‘HE in a Web 2.0 World Report‘ a couple of weeks ago.